Sony Concept firmware didn’t get any DUALSHOCK 4 support, here’s why

Earlier this month, Android 7.1.1 update was made ready for the Sony Xperia X Concept firmware. Xperia owners got excited about it as it brought the PlayStation Remote Play app. People have been requesting for the application to come to their Xperia phones. So it arrived but unfortunately, it seems to be incomplete as there is no DUALSHOCK 4 PlayStation 4 controller support.

This is frustrating for the Xperia owners-slash-Playstation gamers because what they thought would be available isn’t ready. There is no support for the controller. Sony didn’t really include DS4 support for a valid reason. The controller support would require numerous changes to the code. It would take more time so the developers just decided not to include it since the AOSP is still frequently changing.

The idea of a Concept firmware is quick updates and releases so waiting for the DS4 support to be properly coded will defeat the purpose. Don’t worry though because Sony is still looking into bringing a fix and another update.

Sony said the DUALSHOCK 4 controller support on Concept firmware is complicated. Here is the official statement from a group of developers at Sony:

“The DS4 is a complex device with both analog and digital joysticks, buttons, a touch pad, accelerometers, gyroscope as well as vibrators for force feedback. To work correctly it requires some extensions to the Gamepad device in the Bluetooth’s HID (Human Interface Device) profile, both in the drivers as well as in the BT stack. This implementation is also performance sensitive, as lag or latency will kill the gaming experience.

“The changes to support DS4 are done in code that is quite frequently changed in AOSP by Google and others, which means that if included they would require a fair bit of attention each time we want to give you a new release. As one of the core principles of the Concept is the ability to update your software quickly, we have decided not to include DS4 support yet. We are looking at these changes to see if we can’t write them in a better way that would require less maintenance.”